Ontario fire department paramedics watch as China Airlines flight 24 arrives at Ontario International Airport after arriving from Taipei, Taiwan Tuesday Jan. 28, 2020. The airlines has dropped the number of flights in March and will cut more flight in April, as the fear of the coronavirus slows international and domestic travel. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)

As disinfection of terminals are ratcheted up, Ontario airport officials are bracing for a historic decline in passengers as a result of stay-at-home strategies employed to fight the novel coronavirus.

Economists predict world air travel will fall in 2020 for the first time since 2009, said Mark Thorpe, CEO of Ontario International Airport.

This month, the airport is experiencing a steep slowdown in both domestic and international travel, Thorpe wrote in a statement released Wednesday, March 18.

The airport is finding space to moth-ball aircraft taken out of service by airlines that will undoubtedly cut the number of flights leaving the Inland Empire commercial airport in the very near future, the airport reported.

Pavement space will be cleared for rental car companies to park cars that won’t be needed, as long as international travel bans remain in place and the demand for domestic travel continues to plummet.

“We will, for instance, support our airline and car rental partners in providing a limited amount of storage for aircraft and vehicles that are taken out of circulation as customer demand decreases,” Thorpe wrote.

Airport managers have confirmed locations for rental car giants Hertz and Avis and are talking to others that need to temporarily store rental vehicles, said airport spokesman Steve Lambert in an emailed response.

Ontario airport has grown steadily since 2016. Even in February at the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak, ONT experienced a 15.6% increase in passengers as compared to February 2019.

While domestic service rose 16.3%, international travel ticked up only slightly, about 3.2% in February.

Passengers traveling to and from Guadalajara, Mexico, have remained steady but the opposite is true for China Airlines’ flights to Taiepei, Taiwan.

China Airlines, which until just recently ran one departure and one arrival daily to and from Taiwan, has dropped to five days a week this month. China Airlines will reduce that number to three flights a week in April, Lambert said. The airline’s flight plans for May have not yet been released.

China Airlines continued to fly to and from Taipei’s Taoyuan International Airport through ONT in late January and all of February, despite a warning from the World Health Organization that said flights to the separate island territory run independently of China were considered “very high risk,” due to the spread of the deadly novel coronavirus in Asia.

The Taiwanese consulate in Los Angeles argued that the outbreak was centered in Wuhan, China, not in Taiwan. Also, Taiwanese health officials had used rigorous screenings to prevent the transmittal of the virus via air flight.

Ontario airport officials, including Thorpe, have defended the continuation of the Taiwan flights into and out of ONT.

On Wednesday, Lambert said passengers from Taiwan are not receiving any special health screenings. “But temperature checks are happening before the passengers board their flight to ONT,” he wrote in an emailed response to questions.

As of Wednesday, March 18, there have been 218,556 cases of the new coronavirus, COVID-19, and 8,940 deaths worldwide, with 84,383 people who’ve recovered. China has 80,894 cases and 3,237 deaths; Taiwan has had 100 cases and one death. The United States has 9,235 cases and 150 deaths.

The airport has stepped up sanitation efforts, increasing the frequency of cleanings of restrooms, handrails, door handles, armrests and countertops, Thorpe reported. The COVID-19 virus can live for several hours on surfaces.

Two years ago, the airport was the first in the nation to use antimicrobial bins at its TSA checkout stations. New passenger screening trays treated with powerful antimicrobial technology inhibit the growth of microorganisms and pathogenic microorganisms on the surface of the bins.

Steve Scauzillo covers environment, public health and transportation for the Southern California News Group. He has won two journalist of the year awards from the Angeles Chapter of the Sierra Club and is a recipient of the Aldo Leopold Award for Distinguished Editorial Writing on environmental issues. Steve studied biology/chemistry when attending East Meadow High School and Nassau College in New York (he actually loved botany!) and then majored in social ecology at UCI until switching to journalism. He also earned a master's degree in media from Cal State Fullerton. He has been an adjunct professor since 2005. Steve likes to take the train, subway and bicycle – sometimes all three – to assignments and the newsroom. He has two grown sons, Andy and Matthew. Steve recently watched all of “Star Trek” the remastered original season one on Amazon, so he has an inner nerd.

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